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April 2013

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What's Up Doc
Can you code?
L
By RANDI
ALTMAN
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
raltman@postmagazine.com
Lesley
Chilcott directs
a Web doc
demystifying
the art of
coding.
Animation was provided by
Click 3X's Juan Delcan.
14
OS ANGELES — Lesley Chilcott, the
producer of such lauded feature documentaries as An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting For Superman and It Might Get Loud, has
produced and directed a short doc about coding called CodeStars. The piece starts with many
familiar faces and names talking about when
they first started coding and what the process
means to them; those faces include Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey,
and Facebook's first female engineer and current VP of Dropbox, Ruchi Sanghvi.
The project came to be when twin brothers Hadi and Ali Partovi, who founded the
Website Code.org, approached Chilcott
about making a documentary on the dearth
of computer scientists in this country.
"I had met Ali, a couple of years ago in San
Francisco while promoting Waiting for Superman.
He and his brother ran several successful tech
startups and now serve on various advisory
boards and are active consultants. They kept
hearing from the heads of most tech companies,
'We can't find enough qualified and amazing coders.' So they thought about making a documentary and asked if I would be interested."
Chilcott (@lesleychilcott) was interested, but
wasn't sure a full-length documentary on coding was they way to go, and instead suggested
something short form for the Web. They all
agreed, but what was the perfect length? "Hadi
and I went back and forth," she says. "Being a
computer science engineer, he did a ton of
research. They ultimately decided on a oneminute trailer, a five-minute promo and a nineminute film that teachers could download
directly from the Code.org Website.
Chilcott wrote up a treatment and pitched
Hadi on her vision. Then the two used their
connections in the high-tech world, of which
there were many, and requested interviews.
Not all, but most, said yes. "Some had no openings in their schedule, but we found that people
were really interested and committed, especially if they run a technology company and are
having problems finding qualified coders."
Sometimes she'd only get a 20-minute meeting with someone, but they would end up staying longer. They started shooting in October,
with Chilcott and team zigzagging the country
collecting interviews. They edited in January, and
went online at the end of February."
POST: I have to ask, can you code?
LESLEY CHILCOTT: "I am taking lessons
at Codecademy! I was so pleasantly relieved
when I finished the first lesson because all of
the people I interviewed insisted that coding
Post • April 2013
Post0413_014-15-WHAT'S UPMLV3FINALREAD.indd 14
isn't as hard as you think — it's more about
problem solving than math. The whole purpose of me directing this was to break down
the myths that you have to be a genius or a
male or a geek who sits alone coding until all
hours of the morning. So I needed to prove
to myself this wasn't true. If I can get through
a lesson, anybody can. None of what I've
learned so far involves math, other than
knowing how to add and subtract."
POST: What did you shoot on?
CHILCOTT: "We shot the entire thing on
Alexa ProRes 4:2:2."
POST: What about the edit, were you cutting
while you went?
CHILCOTT: "We edited on the Avid Media
Composer. I worked with Chris Catanach at
Stitch Editing in Santa Monica. He's a super
timeline across platforms rather than rebuilding the entire piece with an EDL conform…
extremely handy when conforming and finishing longer pieces like this."
POST: What were some notes you would give?
CHILCOTT: "I had certain things that I
wanted to say with the piece, and I wanted to
make sure we didn't end up with just a bunch
of talking heads, even though everyone was
saying very interesting things. I still needed to
tell a story, so it was about combining storytelling with an interesting issue in the right
way. It was also about breaking down these
myths about coding and getting people to
look at it from a new perspective."
POST: What about the audio post?
CHILCOTT: "I asked Steven Dewey at
Machine Head if he would do this, and I was
Lesley Chilcott, with the Arri Alexa, directing
one of the interviews for CodeStars.
young, talented editor who was perfect for this
project. I also asked Dan Swietlik, who owns
Stitch, to chime in from time to time. We had
11 shoot days, and after each day I would bring
the footage with me, and Chris would load it
in, and we would pick selects." Chris transcoded the Alexa footage into Avid Media Composer at a low resolution (DNx 36) so that we
could work quickly with the material and our
system wouldn't get bogged down by the large
amount of footage that tends to accompany
long-form and documentary pieces.
"For the Web finish, we went back to the
original Alexa ProRes files so our final picture
would have as much detail and latitude as
possible when being colored. Conform, color,
cleanup and finishing was done down the hall
in an Avid DS system. Using Avid Media Composer for the offline edit and Avid DS for the
finishing allowed us to seamlessly transfer our
delighted when he said yes.They did the sound
design and mix for me. There is some sound
design in the animations as well as the live
action because we were shooting in all these
different environments — we needed cleaning
up and EQ-ing and all of that. Then my friend
Greg Kuehn, who owns Peligro Music, did all of
the music. We were able to get a trailer slot at
AMC and Regal Theatres, so POP Sound
mixed the trailer and Jonsi was kind enough to
let us license once of his songs."
POST: Considering you only had one shot
with these guys, capturing clean sound on location must have been incredibly important?
CHILCOTT: "Exactly, so I made sure to
have really excellent sound people, because in
some cases you had 20 minutes and you're
done. For me, sound is every bit as important
as visuals when making a documentary."
POST: Can you talk about your set-up?
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